Hivy is an office management service to manage all those startup perks-NewsCO.com.au

Have you ever wondered why the snack bowls on the second floor of your fancy startup office never runs out of snacks? Your office manager is most likely in charge of all of this, and sometimes it can be hard for them to keep track of all requests and make sure everything is running smoothly. Hivy plans to be the only service office managers ever need. The company is participating in Y Combinator’s current batch.

While the startup is still quite young, companies like Slack, Deliveroo, SeatGeek or Typeform are already using it to manage all their perks. Hivy was first created by the startup studio eFounders.

“We are building a platform for office managers,” co-founder and CEO Pauline Tordeur told me. “On this platform, we’ll handle employee requests, finding a new supplier, buying stuff on Amazon and more. We’re already taking care of the task management part quite well and we’re now building the service part with a marketplace.”

Eventually, Hivy wants you to be able to find all the answers you need as an office manager, with other office managers recommending services that they use so you can quickly make a decision for an event or a long-term change.

Let’s say all your employees can purchase a computer, a monitor and peripheral devices. Hivy lets you build a catalog of devices so your employees can simply pick what they want from this catalog.

Similarly, if you’re out of fruits, employees can notify their office manager on Hivy. Hivy also integrates directly with Amazon so you can order a product without having to leave Hivy.

And if your request is a bit more complicated or you need to talk about it with your office manager, you can simply start a conversation and get notified on the next steps.

You can interact with Hivy in many different ways. For instance, you can leave an iPad in the kitchen and your employees can order food from the tablet. “The iPad app is cool because it creates a physical presence for Hivy in startup offices,” co-founder Simon-Pierre Behr told me.

You also can use your iPhone, computer or even Slack. And I feel like that’s the reason why Slack got addicted to the product. You can send requests to your office manager using the Hivy bot in Slack. It’s quite convenient that you don’t have to leave Slack for this kind of stuff.

If you work in a tiny startup, you probably don’t need something like Hivy. But as your team grows, you’ll need a tool to manage all these vendors and this big budget. Many Silicon Valley startups end up spending thousands of dollars every year for each employee. Having a tool to keep track of all that can help you save money, increase employee retention and more.

Hivy is a software-as-a-service product with a monthly subscription. The startup is still experimenting with its pricing strategy, but it won’t cost too much to run Hivy.

The end goal is much bigger. With the Hivy Club, the startup will list all sorts of vendors directly on the platform. “The idea is that we’ll have one to three suppliers for each category with reviews from other office managers,” Tordeur said.

Think about it as a curated platform with a nice quote from Slack’s office manager saying why they like this caterer or that cleaning company. And, of course, Hivy will take a cut of all these transactions. This could end up generating a lot of revenue.